The NHS was well-versed in planning for winter, Ms Roberts said, but there had been “unprecedented demand” this year.<\/p>\n
The flu vaccination was the best defence against the virus, she said.<\/p>\n
“We know that the virus can be life-threatening or life -limiting for some of the most vulnerable in our population.” she explained.<\/p>\n
“It’s really, really important that the public, where they can, get that flu vaccine.”<\/p>\n
She also told BBC News that planned doctor’s strikes would put extra pressure on healthcare services.<\/p>\n
“Our focus will continue to be on maintaining patient safety and delivering really high quality care to those who need us.<\/p>\n
“We have quite a lot of preparation and planning to ensure we can maintain emergency care first and foremost, and support the best possible flow through our hospitals and healthcare system.”<\/p>\n
Some elective appointments may need to be cancelled, she said, but patients were urged to attend as normal unless advised otherwise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The NHS was well-versed in planning for winter, Ms Roberts said, but there had been “unprecedented demand” this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":315441,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[102,2960,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-315440","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-healthcare","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=315440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315440\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/315441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=315440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=315440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=315440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}